October 03, 2011

Free Download: Johannes Brahms' "Tragic Overture in D minor, Op.81"

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) is a German composer and pianist whose music influenced many twentieth-century composers. He was born to a middle-class family in Hamburg and was composing by age 16. Brahms deeply appreciated and studied earlier composers, and in fact defended their relevance to a movement of composers led by Liszt. The Musicians of the Future, as they called themselves, thought that the future of music was in connecting it explicitly to an ideology or literary idea.

The Tragic Overture (1880) was written in conjunction with the Academic Festival Overture. Unlike much of the music at the time, the Tragic Overture has no specific story and instead is intended to express emotion. The piece reflects Beethoven's influence on the composer; like the Ninth Symphony, it is in D minor.

This recording is performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, John Carewe conducting.